Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Contentment and other impossibles

Well, I walked over to mom's computer all prepared to write a review of The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrman version (bottom line: long, but worth your time), and made the mistake of opening facebook.
Saw a picture someone posted of their newly purchased beautiful stone historic house, with incredible landscaping.

How honest can I be here on this blog? How honest do I want to be? Friends, I coveted that house. Seriously, it was like a punch to the stomach. I wanted it. I was jealous of this person, who I don't even know. Then I was angry. Why can't I have something like this? Or even close to this? I'm a freaking cancer survivor for Pete's sake - don't I deserve this? Then, the guilt. Coveting, envying - this is sin. Being ungrateful for what you do have, that you and your husband work hard for - this is sin. But I still want a house like that.

Contentment is a hard lesson to learn. This is why I stay off Pinterest. But you can't disengage from life, and when you live in this area, you can't avoid beautiful houses that belong to other people.

Feelings pop up all the time - with me it's usually envy and anger. For you it may be different. And each time I have to play spiritual whack-a-mole: hit them on the head with prayer and then redirect.

Why do I share this with you? Because writing it out helps. Because I don't want to hide struggles, even if they paint me in a bad light. Actually, light is usually the only thing that banishes the darkness.

Now, in the spirit of whack-a-mole, I'm going to get off the computer.

2 comments:

Showing ourselves for who we really are requires courage and humility. Good job! And although gratitude helps me enormously with my myriad discontents, confession is ultimately needed to begin to root out my sins. Like you said, "light is usually the only thing that banishes the darkness." Better a "bad light" than a safe darkness.